Bulgarian prosecutors to investigate former Food Agency PR adviser
Bulgarian prosecutors have decided to open an investigation into how the company owned by a former media adviser for the country’s Food Agency has spent acquired assets worth more than one million leva within the space of one year, Bulgarian media reported on August 24.
The investigation comes in the wake of revelations by daily newspaper Sega, which detailed the acquisitions made by the firms owned by Kristina Spassova, 25, after she quit her job at the agency.
Sega decided to launch the investigation after it emerged that the Agriculture Ministry paid its former employee 50 000 leva, the equivalent of about 25 000 euro, to set up a Facebook profile and Twitter account for the ministry’s programme for development of rural areas.
On the same day that Spassova quit her government job, she registered a company that spent nearly one million leva to buy two offices and a minority stake in another firm that has been busy buying and leasing agricultural land, Sega said.
The revenues of Spassova’s firm did not match the spending, nor did the company appear to have taken bank loans, raising questions about the source of the funds, Sega said.
The daily said that its attempts to get in touch with Spassova were unsuccessful, while the Agriculture Ministry was rebuffing all information access requests concerning the tender to set up and maintain the Facebook profile and Twitter account for the ministry’s rural areas programme.
Sofia city prosecutor’s office decided to take the initiative and launch an inquiry, whose goal will be to ascertain whether the daily’s revelations contain sufficient grounds to launch formal pre-trial proceedings, news website mediapool.bg reported, citing unnamed sources with the prosecutor’s office.
Photo: foxumon/sxc.hu
